Friday, June 24, 2011

Apathy and loathing on the 2012 campaign trail

Barack
Obama may be leading Mitt Romney and the rest of the Republican
presidential hopefuls in one-on-one matchups, but if the GOP finds a
generic Republican without a face, a name, a history or a legislative
record, Obama is toast.

A new Gallup poll shows Obama as the 5-point underdog to "a Republican," which the investigative reporters at Wonkette point out would spell trouble for the incumbent "if there were any Republicans running for president."

It
seems the Republican-leaning poll respondents are making the allusive
statement that they prefer no candidate to any currently being offered.
That, or they're hoping that a real Republican will emerge before
primary season officially kicks off in February 2012 – someone who
embodies the conservative principles of the Republican Party but who
needn't pander to corporations, zealots, bigots, and radicals as a
prerequisite for public office. Also in a perfect world, bees wouldn't
have stingers, trees would rake their own leaves, Democrats would have
spines, and wannabe voters would have to pass aptitude tests in order to
cast a ballot.

Understandably,
nobody is quite sure how to interpret these contradictory polls. How
ought the media report a series of surveys showing that grocery store
shoppers preferred paper over plastic in one poll but in another poll preferred "no bags" to paper bags?

The
electorate either is confused or apathetic. In either case, a more
telling survey might ask the question, "Does it matter who is elected
president in 2012?" It wouldn't be any more revealing than the polls we
have now – one wouldn't need the experience of a legislative whip or the
clairvoyance of a fortune teller to make an educated guess about how
the data would turn out – but it might serve as a reminder to our
elected officials that, as a wise man once said, the government isn't
only "of the people and by the people," it's also supposed to be for the
people.

The
fact that nearly one in five Americans doesn't have a preference when
it comes to electing the next president should be a clear sign to every
candidate – whether an incumbent or a challenger, a Democrat or a
Republican, a socialist or a teabagger – that we expect more than from
our elected representatives than the options they're currently
providing.